


What Love Requires

by MonsieurClavier



Series: Daddymort [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adorable, Babies, Borgin and Burkes (Harry Potter), Children, Crack Treated Seriously, Cute, Father-Son Relationship, Fatherhood, Gen, Innocence, Knights of Walpurgis, Protective Tom Riddle, Retail Worker Tom Riddle, Sane Tom Riddle, Single Parents, Sweet, Sweet Harry Potter, Time Travel, Tom Riddle | Voldemort Adopts Harry Potter, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, a bunch of really confused and really terrified death eaters, albus dumbledore quietly panicking in the background, and that does... things... to tom's cold black heart, and tom swearing to personally dismember anybody who threatens harry's happiness, baby feels, cut to: tom's conscience having a seizure, harry is actually a really happy baby???, harry obliterating tom with UNCONDITIONAL LOVE, hepzibah smith is a sweetheart and becomes harry's grandma, horcruxes? what horcruxes? you try juggling being a dark lord with parenting responsibilities, in the wise words of britney spears: "with a kid on my arm i'm still an exceptional earner", inevitable feels fest, minerva mcgonagall's hilarious parenting advice based on cat children and no actual human children, really fucking weird things, to protecting baby harry because harry is HIS, tom going from protecting baby harry because harry is his horcrux, tom literally obliterating anything and anyone that threatens harry, tom's plans are UTTERLY derailed, tom: "it's britney bITCH"
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25785202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsieurClavier/pseuds/MonsieurClavier
Summary: Have you ever pictured Lord Voldemort changing diapers?He hasn’t, either.
Relationships: Harry Potter & Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: Daddymort [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1870570
Comments: 142
Kudos: 1106





	What Love Requires

**Author's Note:**

> Desperate to prevent his lord’s death, a time-travelling Lucius Malfoy goes back to 1947 to hand a baby Harry Potter over to a younger Voldemort.
> 
> In this story, Trelawney makes the prophecy a lot sooner, which leads to the original Voldemort attempting to kill Harry when the poor kid is only six months old. For shame, Voldemort. For shame. _Six months old?_
> 
> As you may already know, 1947!Tom isn’t publicly calling himself “Voldemort” yet, even though he can’t stand his insipid, common, mediocre Muggle name anymore.
> 
> I guess he’d better get used to insipid, common, mediocre parenting instead. I’ve taken a special, vengeful joy in making Tom a parent at the age of just twenty, the same age when Lily and James became Harry’s parents. LOL DEAL WITH IT BITCH.
> 
> Please also note that Tom is currently poor af because a) he was always poor af, just poor with _style_ , b) Wool’s Orphanage didn’t exactly have a trust fund, c) Tom is too proud to accept charity from his rich proto-Death Eater lackeys, and d) Tom is too proud to accept charity from the Pureblood arseholes who bullied him as a first-year and who were only recently his schoolmates.
> 
> Tom does have money saved up, but he’s saving it for his romp across Europe (including Albania) in search of Dark artefacts, and he is _not_ about to blow his hard-earned savings on baby formula and nappies. (Or at least, he thinks he isn’t. Watch him flush his money down the toilet to look after his inconvenient little Horcrux!)
> 
> The title is from this quote by Ian Morgan Cron: “A boy needs a father to show him how to be in the world. He needs to be given swagger, taught how to read a map so that he can recognize the roads that lead to life and the paths that lead to death, how to know what love requires, and where to find steel in the heart when life makes demands on us that are greater than we think we can endure.”

The hour was early and the air was cold, a smoky, post-dawn chill that smothered and sickened. The stench of clogged gutters, burning coal and ancient, slow-moving Dark magic wafted on the breeze—or what there was of it. The morning fog was as still as a dead body, cloaked in grey and motionless amid the ramshackle rooftops of Knockturn Alley.

The sign hanging inside the glass door of Borgin and Burkes swung as Tom flipped it to say ‘Closed’. The skull on the display case clacked its teeth at him.

Tom’s night shift was finally over. He felt grimy and tired as he always did at the end of his shift, worn thin by hours of pretense, of politeness, of gods-be-damned _customer service_ to those who should be lucky enough to be on the receiving end of his Cruciatus. He had seen every despicable example of so-called ‘humanity’ here, including thieves selling stolen relics, gamblers pawning away ancestral treasures, murderers hunting for untraceable weapons, and men in lust with their adolescent daughters searching for undetectable potions to drug them with. Those last, Tom always did his best to sell cursed items to. They wouldn’t live long enough to commit their chosen sins.

Tom was just about to lock up and leave when a whirlwind blasted through the door and deposited a minion at his feet. The black robes were unmistakable. A Knight of Walpurgis.

At first, Tom thought it was Abraxas, for the pale, bowed head was familiar, but then the Knight raised his head and—

And Tom’s wand was in his hand, pointed at the stranger’s neck. “Who are you?”

“My lord.” Malfoy, for it _had_ to be a Malfoy, held a squirming bundle wrapped in what appeared to be a blue terrycloth towel with a pattern of yellow ducks on it. The contrast between it and the carrion-black robes was surreal. “I will only be here for a few minutes. I am Abraxas Malfoy’s son, Lucius. And this… this is your Horcrux, my lord. Your last Horcrux. I am here to return it to you in the hopes that you may avoid creating it in the future, for in its creation you will die.”

_Die?_ Tom would never die. And yet this unfamiliar Malfoy’s words unsettled him, desperate and genuine as they were. Malfoy was not lying. A sweep of Legilimency confirmed it. “What of my other Horcruxes? Surely I would have had additional insurance.”

Malfoy acquired a hangdog expression. On closer inspection, his frost-pale hair was streaked with silver, and his haggard, once-noble face was stubbled, with the sort of cadaverous thinness more suited to an Azkaban escapee than a Pureblood patriarch. Abraxas would be appalled to see the Malfoy line so fallen. “Yes, my lord. But your body was effectively killed, and it took you a decade to resurrect—a delay that would eventually cost you your life, your Horcruxes, and the war.”

A high price to pay, indeed. What error had Tom’s future self made in the process of creating a Horcrux, for it to backfire so? But no, he didn’t have the luxury to conduct an extended interrogation; Malfoy would soon be gone. The most pressing matter was… “How have you travelled back in time?”

“A specialised Time-Turner, my lord, constructed with painstaking devotion over many, many years. All to prevent your death.” Malfoy pressed a roll of parchment into the folds of the towel. “The details are written here. I may be whisked back at any moment. If only I could—”

But Tom never found out what Malfoy could or could not do, for Malfoy vanished, leaving only the bundle on the floor.

It was at that precise moment that the towel fell open, revealing a wide-awake, green-eyed infant that gazed straight back at Tom.

Tom felt a _jolt_ within him, a shock of recognition.

He knew the soul that stared out at him from those eyes.

Or he knew a part of it.

So Malfoy hadn’t been lying, after all.

Still, a human Horcrux? How extraordinary. And the only human Horcrux in wizarding history, no less; no wonder it was Lord Voldemort who had managed it when nobody else could, although something seemed to have gone awry in its formation.

Tom couldn’t read Malfoy’s love letter from the future within Borgin and Burkes itself, since it was far too valuable a document to be perused hurriedly on such insecure premises. Tom had to return to his flat, which was as heavily warded as a battleship. Only there could he relax enough to go about solving the mystery of his ‘last Horcrux’. Clad in too-large orange pyjamas as it was.

***

Smuggling an infant into his dilapidated, three-storey building of flats on the outskirts of Knockturn Alley was no mean feat. Even with a disillusionment charm and a silencing charm to muffle the babe’s occasional snuffles, there were creatures in Knockturn with senses beyond the merely human, and they lurked around every corner.

A shtriga with glowing eyes and a carnivorous grin looked _directly_ at the baby in Tom’s arms, impervious to mortal trickery. A werewolf in a tattered Muggle coat, searching his pockets for keys outside yet another dilapidated building, lifted his chin and sniffed the air curiously. A hag with a creaking, rotting wooden stand displaying dried organs breathed in shudderingly as Tom passed, her talon-like nails clicking quietly against the bone-white beads she wore.

Tom had never been so painfully aware of just how dangerous this neighbourhood was, although it could hardly be called a ‘neighbourhood’ on account of how distinctly un-neighbourly its denizens were.

Of course, Tom himself was afraid of none of them; he could destroy them all with ease. No, what unnerved him was that he was now hampered by this _thing_ he had to protect, this _thing_ that was vulnerable and small and utterly helpless.

Why had his future self chosen such a helpless vessel? Was it not the height of idiocy to choose a Horcrux that could not defend itself—and that, by virtue of its fragility, could not be secreted away in some distant, well-guarded crypt to be ignored forever?

No, this vessel would have to be fed, and bathed, and… changed, or whatever it was that was done with miniature human gremlins who soiled themselves.

Just as Tom neared the safety of his living quarters—for he would never, in a thousand years, call that hellhole a _home_ , an honour reserved for Hogwarts, and Hogwarts alone—the baby emitted a loud, piercing cry.

And beamed up at Tom smugly as every beast with supernatural hearing within a hundred yards perked up.

“You little _cretin_ ,” Tom swore, and sped up until he was nearly running, careening past the front door of his building, racing up the stairs like a man possessed, wandlessly unlocking all the wards on his flat’s door as he approached it, and all but colliding with the hallway wall when he finally barrelled in.

He leaned against the wall, panting, as the door slammed shut behind him and the wards reassembled themselves.

Tom collapsed onto the rickety stool he usually sat on to put on his shoes. He wiped the sweat from his brow one-handedly and glowered down at the bundle of not-at-all joy clutched desperately in his other arm.

The baby gurgled up at him, batted its bloody _eyelashes_ , and grinned.

“Sodding hell,” Tom muttered.

Not only had Tom’s future self selected a deficient vessel, he’d also selected a _brat_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, this is how I headcanon baby!Harry, so you can see why Tom is bound to crumble (no glasses yet, but still):

**Author's Note:**

> There are only two types of writers: “HAHAHA I WILL SCOOP OUT YOUR INNARDS WITH A BUTTER KNIFE AND MAKE YOU THANK ME FOR IT” and “pls step on me dear reader :)”
> 
> Guess which one I am.
> 
> (It isn’t the first.)
> 
> So please do review if you can!


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